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Women, and not their modesties, are feeling outraged. So is everybody else.

Something seems to have changed. Friends and acquaintances have been calling more than ever before, even those friends who had, earlier, seemed indifferent to such issues. I guess they just need to talk. One friend wanted to know if I knew of any protests that she could join. Another friend wondered if they had driven past that same white bus on their way to the airport on the 16th evening, another couldn’t get over the fact that the bus must have passed the road infront of her house. I had not realised the extent of the brutality until one of them told me – the domestic helpers in her area lived in the same slum the rapists did. She, like many others, hasn’t been able to sleep well since then.

When I went for a protest in our neighbourhood, I didn’t expect more than a hundred people, and atleast half of them men and, many young girls with their parents and grand parents. One man asked, “Do you think these protest would help?” I do of course (Though not sure how much.)

Another acquaintance who has always been cautious in giving her opinion said very slowly, “Why just castration? What they did should be done to them.” So I don’t agree with those who think the anger and the protests are not spontaneous.

One elderly acquaintance who always blamed the victim, said she heard on the TV that some countries castrated rapists, and the channel was asking why this could not be done to rapists in India. She still hesitated in giving her own opinion – she seemed amazed that the TV channel made it look like the victim could really not be blamed for “asking to be sexually assaulted”. Times are changing she said, this younger generation of men and women is a different lot. She always thought it was the silly younger women who said silly things like ‘no woman asks to be raped no matter what she wore (etc)’.

Can she be blamed for her hesitation in condemning a rapist? When we hear a lie a million times, in a million ways, from people who we expect to know better, it’s possible to never have the opportunity to take our own doubts seriously. Which is why those who are paid (with our money) to take responsible decisions, should be legally forbidden from making irresponsible statements.

It should not be so easy for those who should be ensuring women’s safety, to avoid taking any action; and to blame, shame and silence the victims.

A lot of Indian women do not even realise that they have a right to feel offended (let alone be outraged) that rapists rape women and are then reassured by our law enforcers and law makers (many of who have charges of rape against themselves) that they did this only because they were provoked by the victim’s clothes or lifestyle.

When they take a crime seriously, they stop doing everything they can to discourage victims from reporting, and they stop making excuses for criminals.

Instead they act, in big ways and small. For the first time they seem interested in providing security to citizens.

Shouldn’t each of them be taught (formally and compulsorily, in an atleast a week long course) that it’s patriarchal-victim-blaming-and-shaming that causes Street Sexual Harassment, and not skirts or sarees? Because like the elderly acquaintance mentioned above, they too have been raised to believe otherwise.

In the Indian criminal justice system, major crimes are likely to remain unreported; if reported, frequently not registered; if registered, the true perpetrator not found; if found, not prosecuted; if prosecuted, not charged; if charged, usually not convicted; if convicted, frequently not adequately punished. At each crucial stage, the system has enough loopholes and inefficiencies to allow the guilty to walk away with impunity.

Where will these judicial additions – fast-track courts for rape cases, ….. come from when at all times since Independence, a minimum of 25% – often 33% – of the country’s aggregated judicial strength at high court level has been vacant!

That too when that total sanctioned number for a 1.25 billion popu-lation is a mere 850?

The lower judiciary – those who decide rape cases and all other serious crimes – fares no better. At least 25% of such posts are always vacant – and the total sanctioned strength for the whole country is only 15,000!

[Please do read to understand why no other change is possible without this one.]

Five lakh cases in all high courts are over 10 years old. The article also mentions a Madhya Pradesh high court case of 1950, a 1951 case in Patna, a 1955 case in Kolkata and a 1956 case in Rajasthan.

It never was. At the same time many people will just ignore it and get on with their lives in their bubbles. I am glad there is a change but not getting my hopes too high because to most people such a gruesome crime is unacceptable but day in and day out subtle misogyny is good and acceptable, our culture, your family caring, your society caring for you. Eliminating That is a difficult task.

@ Praveen, I know that nobody deserves to be raped. But, when I hear of the extent of their brutality, I feel so, so very angry. I want them to KNOW how it feels to be raped.

I want to cry and I want to scream in anger all at the same time. And it is not about this rape alone. Every single day. Every.SINGLE.day.you read about a molestation, a rape, “eve teasing”, acid attack, a murder because she rejected him, the list of crimes committed against women is HUGE.

Even as people were protesting against the rape they were being molested. What IS IT about the mind of the Indian Chauvinistic Male? Why do they behave the way they do? Isn’t it enough that their Father prefers them to their sister? Isn’t it enough that their mom probably starves herself AND his sister so that HIS growing body may not be deprived of food? Isn’t it enough that when he grows up he gets to boss his own mother around and have her as his personal servant? Isn’t it enough that his sisters (older than him or younger) are his own personal maids to cook for him, serve him food and wash and iron his clothes?
In spite of all this, why does he feel the need to rape a woman?

You would think that someone who was brought up with that much love and affection would have enough confidence that rejection from ONE woman wouldn’t dent their ego that much. But, no. They have “deigned” to love her. That B*%^h ought to be grateful and fall at his feet. But, instead she rejects him and his ego can’t stand it.

IHM, I am so sorry for this long, rambling and totally aimless rant. But, I am just so very, very angry.

There are a million and a half brutal things in the world, at different levels on the scale of brutality. Unfortunately, it is human nature to be more worried about personal dentist appointments than any of those things.

As a corporate lawyer, one of the first deals I worked on was a ‘cleaning up operation’ with a small-ish research-based startup that ran out of funding in its third year. A large part of the ‘clean up’ essentially involved buying up whatever additional intellectual property they could muster, for a fraction of what its real value would have been, had they been in a position to bargain. Since they were not in a position to bargain, hard deals were driven, and the founders were sent packing with peanuts in exchange for lifetimes worth of work. Being a newbie, I was given mostly background grunt work, and I didn’t really participate in the actual decision making; in later years, I worked in greater capacity on much larger M&As, in much more challenging roles, with a lot more money involved. However, I never quite forgot that particular deal. It left a bitter taste in my mouth that I could never quite get rid of. I understood that it was ‘just business’, and everything was fine from a legal point of view. I attempted to mirror the indifference that my peers and bosses demonstrated, and even succeeded to a good extent. But it never really went away,

The moral questions and the indifference haunted me, and that deal was certainly a factor when I decided to quit this line of work. It was not the only, or even main reason, but it was there at the back of my mind.

So what is the point of this story? The point is, to a sensitive person, it can be a bit hard to come to terms with the idea that many people just don’t care. What is even harder to acknowledge is that these people usually have reasons for not caring, reasons that are sometimes little more than excuses, but also reasons that are often compelling and valid in their own right.

A corporate takeover, especially one that is sanctioned by law and by the general rules of business, cannot be compared to a gang rape, or to throwing acid on a person’s face, or to any of the barbaric acts that happen with such sickening regularity in so many countries in the world. However, regardless of the nature of the act and its legal status, it can be jarring when others, for whatever reason, refuse to acknowledge the extent of a victim’s suffering and see it fit to find platitudes and bromides to explain it all away.

In my view – and in this, I am sure I am merely adding my voice to a chorus – rape is perhaps one of the most morally repulsive things a human being can do to another. In my view, there are few acts of interpersonal violence more reprehensible, more condemnable than rape. But I also find that the answer, if indeed there is such a thing here as an ‘answer’, is not anger, but compassion. It is not anger that will destroy rape. It is the compassion that all humans must feel towards another which will render it unacceptable.

All said and done, rape is an attack on an individual, a negation of their humanity, a denial of their space and their feelings as a person in their own right. Let us, in our own small way, begin creating small spaces where that humanity is respected – regardless of ideological differences. Note that I am not arguing for moral relativism. As I have noted, sexism and misogyny need to be challenged on a daily basis. However, let us direct our challenge towards sexism, not sexists. Remember, they are how they are for a reason. Perhaps they have been brought up in that way. Perhaps they learned it from their environment. Perhaps you do not want to go into that and merely decide to note that they are unpleasant people. That’s fine. In any case, our task is not to condemn them, but to condemn the ideology they might follow, for by attacking individuals, we partake in rapists’ brand of logical discourse. Even though we are not morally equivalent to them by any stretch of imagination, we tap into the same repertoire of argument that they do, which is dangerous and to be avoided.

When one says “No one deserves to be raped”, there is no ‘but’ to it. It is not a statement that should be subject to conditions.

I understand that I might sound like too much of an idealist and too little of one to different people (depending on their points of view), but there you are.

I can certainly see where biwo’s statement comes from, and I can empathize with her (and you), but I find the ultimate sentiment expressed therein disagreeable, repugnant and unacceptable all the same. I am sorry, but in my mind, no amount of anger excuses or makes palatable such a sentiment.

I am afraid of this whole ‘deserve to be raped’ logic.. however bad or evil a person might be, he/she doesn’t deserve to be raped. For you, the neighbors’ mindset is the problem, for someone it might be the rebellious nature of a girl, while for some the very fact that one is a girl can be reason enough to rape.

Can’t reply to PT’s actual comment below, so doing it here:
“It is not anger that will destroy rape. It is the compassion that all humans must feel towards another which will render it unacceptable.”
Best words ever uttered. Thank you, PT.

1. Hopes for an immediate revolution are sure to be dashed
2. Long-term change is almost inevitable, but in all probability, also terminally slow in the coming

Things aren’t going to change that easily (or quickly). If we’re hoping people are going to change their attitudes towards rape out of a single incident, that’s not going to happen. The best outcome I can imagine is:

a) At least some people have their consciousness raised
b) At least some steps are taken towards some of the reforms required to drag India out into the modern age

I attended a protest march myself yesterday, and although it was an emotionally fulfilling experience, I imagine a lot of my co-protesters would have been put off by the kind of half-baked change I’ve called the ‘best outcome’. As you said, there’s a fair amount of spontaneous anger here – it’s not all that channelized, and it has been hijacked to some extent by various interests – but it exists. However, as I pointed out in my E-Mail, anger is all but useless as a method of reform unless tempered by realism and a sense of directed purpose. As we raised placards against the insensitivity of society against rape, there were voices of hysteria demanding 30 day trials and sure justice for all victims. The activist part of me loved those voices, the idealist in me would’ve joined in the hysteria gladly, but the voice of reason – as much as I would’ve like it to go take a hike – forced me to shake my head sadly instead.

You see, it’s not going to happen. This is a fact we need to accept.

We can scream till we are blue in the face, but the fact is that NO ONE has the power to actually effect the changes that we, as protesters, really want to see. Because this isn’t about the gang rape anymore. It never really was about the gang rape. It was about women feeling insecure every time they stepped out the door. It IS about that insecurity, that utter lack of a sense of safety, that general exclusion from public spaces which makes it so incredibly hard to get on with everyday life. No can can change that just because they want to. Not the government, not civil society, no one. This is not to say that nothing can be done. Sure, we can try. We MUST try. As hard as we can.
Sure, we can make a concerted push in the direction we want the country to go. We can try to START the process. But let’s not forget that despite the protests, despite the sloganeering, this woman’s parents are still afraid to name her. The ingrained attitudes of an entire society aren’t something that can be changed by a week, even a month of protests. It literally takes generations.

Let’s push hard for the efforts to be made, and hope for the best, because that’s pretty much all that can be done. If that sounds like too little to anyone, I guess a warm welcome into reality is in order. As much as the media channels make it sound like that, the vast majority of the country still doesn’t care about this largely middle-class protest over issues that surely must seem so trivial when you’re busy wondering whether your children are going to be able to eat tonight. They may not be trivial to us – they are important. I am not suggesting these issues are unimportant.

But let’s not forget that it’s a huge country, with a lot of people, who have vastly different priorities.
I still don’t see a popular groundswell outside of relatively affluent sections of the society and politically speaking, that tends to spell doom for a movement.

I agree… I was talking to a friend about this, and she was very vocal and graphic about the type of punishment that needs to be given to the culprits…things like castration and the like. It was clear that she was enraged and saddened by this one incident. But she is the same friend who talks about her sister wanting to have a male child badly, and does not think anything wrong with it. She is the same one who thinks women tend to be insufficient if they do not have the company of men. It does sadden me immensely that we, as a society needed a crime of this magnitude for the country to steer their attention in the direction of the atrocities against women. And after talking to many people, I have realized that the attention is very little towards the condition of women as a whole and is more for the brutality of the crime.
But, as PT said, “some” change will surely come out of this crime, with regards to better implementation of rape law. If nothing else, just sparking more dialogue among people regarding women issues will change some minds.

I agree with PT and couldn’t have said it better. Many people I know, outraged by this incident are merely reacting to this one incident, the rage tipping more towards revenge.

On one side, many men I know are saying that they are ashamed to be called a man, but I see hardly any difference in their behaviour towards their women. The same old high-handedness, the same old chauvinism. I see many women sharing ‘statistics’ as to what makes a man rape and victimise a woman and how we can prevent it.

Sadly, I see educated and intelligent people reacting to the Delhi girl’s death with ‘I hope she comes back and haunts the rapists and tortures them to death’, or ‘Protesters should march into the prison and strip the rapists naked and beat them to death’. A lot of them are a part of the protest because they want change, but when I ask them what changes they want, the answers scare me. Public humiliation of rapists by stripping and pelting stones, mob attacks, and everything that is twisted and violent.

What I would also rebuke is sensationalising of this news with the names the girl has been given. I can so imagine a journalist conference brain storming about her name and the ‘wows’ that followed when somebody suggested ‘Damini’ or the other names. And to add to it, people are now sharing pictures on FB that is supposed to be that girl.

Honestly, I don’t think that much has changed. I don’t live in India, but most of the posts that I see on Facebook seem to consist of let’s hang the rapists/castrate them/enforce vigilante justice. Few people seem to realise that the real problem is the chauvinistic attitudes which are ingrained in most Indian men from a very young age. And all these politicians saying “we too have mothers, sisters, daughters”….so any woman who is not their mother sister or daughter is fair game? Can’t they just say “we too have important women in our lives” and leave it at that?
There is a much greater awareness about sexual violence but very few people are actually addressing the root cause of it.

Leader who wanted skirts banned is gifted one by students
In his letter to the chief secretary, Mr Singhal demanded that girl students be made to wear salwar suits or shirts and trousers as uniform to reduce chances of their being subjected to lewd comments or harassment.
School girls and women agitators – livid over Alwar BJP MLA Banwari Lal Singhal’s statement that girls should not wear skirts – held demonstrations outside his house and handed him a skirt in protest over the weekend.
“Why can’t boys be asked to change their ways? Why are girls being told what to wear? Do you expect a six-year-old child to be draped in a sari?” asked one of the protestors.

This incident has paved a way to open the hearts of many who have seemingly only known so far to find fault with the victims when it comes to cases of Sexual assault where until now we could only think of blaming the girl involved with an array of reasons and rationale.
The emotional wound for the victims and their family is only deepened with such sarcasm and sympathy portrayed by onlookers… Atleast, for once there seems to be an awakening, change in the thought process and depth in the attitudes as we can see at large.

For the people are also sick to their stomach with the intolerable governance they are subjected to and their agitation got all the more aggravated with incidents like this bringing a wave of frustration and call for change among the people across the country!
Its high time we need leaders who take enough initiative to blame the culprits involved in such incidents rather than reasoning the cause as in putting blame on the skirt worn by victim…

A powerful initiation for change… The article is very well put, IHM…

Meanwhile, I hope you have a have a lovely new year ahead… Best wishes!!
Looking forward to read more of your thought provoking articles…

Yes I also felt something has changed. this time.I never expected speaking logically like me ,previously those same women out-casted me for so called liberal thinking (for me that is logical thinking).For me she(our dear lady who passed away in the assault) is Avatar of God who is changing the world , I hope she has started the satyug…..

An American gentleman had an important question in a discussion brought about by the hindu newspaper. He wanted to know if the current outrage, protests and collective hand wringing had any effect on the Indian villages where 800 million Indians live. Are the people in the villages outraged too? Are they talking about it like the people in the cities are?Or is this only in the metros and English media?Things would really change in India only if the villages participate in the change.

Well, lower class/caste women in India get raped and killed all the time, just that the media does not cover it the same way it covered the Delhi rape. In this case, a middle class woman accompanied by her middle class friend got raped/tortured/murdered. This hits closer to home for most of the educated Indian middle class. I don’t imply that this makes them unsympathetic people with regard to the lower class/caste women victims, just that it’s human nature to feel more empathy to people who are in similar social levels to yours.

The important point is, since we cannot live in middle class islands, meaningful change in rape numbers would need people from all parts and all classes to protest and wish for change and not just the class of people seen on TV for the last few weeks. And since the lower caste are human too, it is very likely that they would join the middle class protesters if we start feeling empathy for their issues.

My heart just sinks thinking of what is happening around us. So much hatred, so much pain and apathy. I keep thinking about how much the girl would have screamed in pain and why her screams did not touch her perpetrators heart. I hope this year is the year of change in our mindsets. I hope we all have changed in some way and the next time a man or a woman makes an offhand comment about some girls skirt we can stop and tell them off. We need to think about how we want our next generation to be. Do we want our daughters to grow in fear and our sons to think they can get away with whatever they want to. I hope we have changed….

Something I found on Facebook.
“On The Delhi Rape Case….
You stay silent when your mother is treated like shit by your father,
You stay silent when your friend takes dowry from his wife’s family,
You stay silent when your classmates sits at a nukkad whistling ‘maal’ at passing women saying it is innocent fun,
You stay silent when a million women every year in this nation are murdered before birth or their breath dunked in milk after birth,
You don’t report the drunkard husband who beat up your maid servant because it is not your business,
You stayed silent when your boss hit upon a female colleague and you told her to grin and bear it because it happens everywhere,
You sing along with your favourite male stars as they call their ‘items’ chikni chameli and halkat jawani etc.,
You stay silent when our police and paramilitary gang rape tribal and lower caste women saying that that’s an aberration of the system,
You did not protest the lower pay that your female colleagues got just
because of their sex,
You helped your parents arrange a marriage for your sister against her
wishes saying she doesn’t know her mind,
You stayed silent when in a family discussion a woman’s voice was silenced by the cacophony of male voices,
You force a woman to wear burqa under the pretext of sharia law or justify their domesticity because some asshole called Manu wrote some asinine laws hundreds of years back,
You think feminism is shit and feminists, loud mouthed ‘bitches’ who have no better work to do, than cry victim,
You applaud as Hindu right wing men barge into a hotel and slap ‘immoral’ women with the intention of ‘reforming’ their ‘maa’ ‘behen’
You stay silent when females in a party are sent away to discuss ‘childish’ things even as you discuss ‘important’ things like politics and all in their absence,
You stayed silent when your father directly and sarcastically showed your mother that she’s lower then men in intelligence time and again,
You objected loudly when your girlfriend, wife wanted to put her life and career ahead of yours saying yours was more important,
And now suddenly you have become a man because ONE woman was brutally
beaten and raped while you conveniently forget the hundreds of women whose psyche you were responsible for brutally beating and raping directly, or indirectly through your inaction… and now you evoke the same ‘maa’ and ‘behen’ argument to protect them…
Thanks to the serpent of your awakened manhood, that woman in Delhi will perhaps get justice.
But what about the millions of other women in the country of different religion, region and sect united by their shared
injustice, who will perhaps never get justice precisely for the same reason…. – your manhood? “

There are a LOT of women who don’t protest against any of the things mentioned above any more than men do, and there are also a lot of women who do their best to perpetuate the system. Sexist, patriarchal thinking is most certainly not confined to the male sex, in terms of either origin or resultant damage, and here, I speak from bitter personal experience.The idea of women of different religions, regions and sects united by anything – least of all daily issues that can be as different as day and dawn – is as much a myth as the Loch Ness monster. The idea of a Software Engineer in Noida facing the same issues as a tribal woman from Chattisgarh is ludicrous to me. They may each be worse off than men in their own class, but in terms of opportunities, freedoms and daily struggles, that difference is dwarfed by the sheer class difference between them. The root cause of some of their issues is indeed the same, but that doesn’t always mean much to individuals. It is like a comparison between a hurricane and a sea current, both of which are ultimately caused by convection, but are completely different in effect and form.

Patriarchy is not as simple as a serpent of manhood oppressing some supposedly united womanhood. There is no such united womanhood. Time and again, IHM has featured women who have made statements just as misogynistic as any male chauvinist. We’ve all met such women. The simplistic world-view espoused in the post represents a misunderstanding not just of patriarchy, but also feminism itself, as it fails to acknowledge the sheer complexity and intersectionality of the social system that exists today. Believe it or not, most men aren’t woman haters. To paraphrase an analogy a commentator once used, they are merely fish swimming along with the current, a current that many of them aren’t even fully aware of. It is not a war between the sexes, but rather a struggle to get people to wake up, smell the full extent of the rot that most of them only dimply suspect lies around them, and do something about it. That struggle must target both sexes, and posts such as these do more harm than good in this regard.

I agree with PT on this. True we are a misogynistic culture but it is not all men practicing patriarchy on all women. I know women who are so deeply socially conditioned that they are more patriarchal and misogynistic than men themselves. This is a social issue of consistently discriminating against a set of people, people thinking it is okay and normal and now that the system is set, it is the system over individual happiness.

This has never been a man vs woman thing, I agree with ou. Women can be as misogynistic as men.
However,I think that this status was timely because the majority of the people reacting to the Delhi case wee reacting to the terrible violence. They didn’t realize that other, more subtler attitudes could also be degrading women.

I believe that there needs to be a full-on effort to include sensitivity training to the police force. Actually, I believe it should be a course in the curriculum, not a only a week’s worth of work. I also believe that all schools must have a discussion hour throughout (from 1st to 12th grade) on matters of gender equality. Of course, it will be age appropriate, but it has to be there. These conversations must continue and be sustained. Then we will have the systemic change we are looking for. Fewer people will like misogynistic b(/k/t/)ollywood movies,TV serials and ads. The producers of these things will see where the money is and move out of making these movies. We can either wait a 1000 years for this to happen, or we can accelerate it with enabling these conversations in the classrooms and in the homes via media campaigns and curriculum modifications.

My 7-yr old daughter’s school syllabus has the usual depiction of a family – the mom working in the kitchen, the dad reading papers etc. Also in answer to a question on people’s vocation, the teacher apparently let the children brainstorm on the possible options for a dad’s career whereas settled for “housewife” for a mom’s (for the lack of time supposedly) Of course there is nothing wrong in moms working in kitchen, being a homemaker, dads reading paper etc. but it is crucial for education to drive home the point that there are (at least “needs to be”) multiple options for both boys and girls to pursue and one need not stick to a stereotype. It is reinforcing of such stereotypee that leads to false assumptions of superiority of one gender etc.